On the 29th of April the guideline for the Carbon Removal Xprize (from Elon Musk) was launched. The XPrize for Carbon Removal has a student team award with a total award of US$5M. Student teams can send in their proposals until the first of October 2021.
In-Scope Solutions for the student teams awards
Any carbon negative project is eligible to win prize money provided it removes CO2 from the air or oceans, and sequesters it in a durable way. Teams may compete in any of the major carbon removal pathways or some combination of the pathways. This list is not intended to be exhaustive.
- Air: direct air capture (DAC) plus sequestration.
- Oceans: algae, kelp, plankton, direct seawater removal, ocean alkalinity enhancement,
- Land: Trees, agricultural solutions, soils, soil microbes and fungi, roots, grasslands, large-scale outdoor natural ecosystem solutions, biochar, etc.
- Rocks: Mineralization, enhanced weathering, mine tailings, subsurface geologic sequestration combined with CO2 removal from the air and/or the ocean, etc.
- Carbon measurement innovations and novel tool kits which directly benefit the carbon removal space: Soil GHG monitoring & verification technology, Ocean GHG monitoring & verification technology, Life Cycle Analysis Tools, Techno-Economic Analysis Tools, and specifically methods and tools for estimating cost at scale of early-stage carbon removal solutions.
4TU
As 4TU, the federation of TU Delft, WUR, UT and TU/e, we would love to support students who are willing to help tackling the climate change. For that reason we are organizing an information session about the XPrize. During this session we will explain more about the XPrize student team award and the possibilities to support teams. If there are enough enthusiastic students we can set up matchmaking session(s) creating intra or cross university student teams. PhD’s can join the team(s) as well!
During the information session there will be several speakers:
- Douwe Dresscher (UT) a current participant in another Xprize challenge.
- Andrea Ramirez, TU Delft professor and former jury member of an XPrize challenge
- Carbyon, a spin-off at Eindhoven working on carbon capture technology.
Information session
An information session will take place on Thursday the 20th of May at 17:00 - 20:00. During the session there will be a virtual connection between the 4 TU’s, who will all organize an information session for their students at the same time. This session is open for all students and PhD's within the 4 universities who are interested in joining Xprize Carbon Capture student award. Free pizzas are included!
